Bridgeport series 1 centroid CNC4 to acorn conversion

[Jason Birch]

Unless it is a shielded ribbon cable, I think that is going to cause problems. You really want your step and direction wires to be shielded twisted pair cables.

You should never use solid hook up wire in a machine tool. Vibration will cause the wires to break at the connection. Best case is they break and fall off. Worst case is they break and the insulation holds it together and you end up with an intermittent connection that is impossible to diagnose.

Automation Direct, McMaster-Carr, Digikey, and Mouser Electronics are a few places where you can buy 18ga stranded MTW (Machine Tool Wire) for your connections.

I would assume it's sheilded ribbon cable. It's all original parts from a centroid CNC4. The jumper wires being a twisted wire does make sense though. The computer is not mounted to the machine and shouldn't really vibrate but still a good idea. I think there is a pile of wire in the original CNC PC I could scavenge plus ive got a couple old PC laying around as well. Thanks for the advice. I'll look into that wire as well.

[Darrell Hall]

Thanks, ordered board today. Also, the Intel NUC. Hopefully have it bench tested this week. Will update as I move along.

[Jason Birch]

Thanks, ordered board today. Also, the Intel NUC. Hopefully have it bench tested this week. Will update as I move along.

Do you have the same drives and motors? Have you had them working at all?

[Darrell Hall]

Yes, same motors that came on the mill and drives that came with the CNC 4. Yes, I can still move all 3-axis using the CNC4 box with the jog buttons I just don't have the computer that I had on it or the software. Thats why I just going to switch to the Acorn.

[Jason Birch]

Yes, same motors that came on the mill and drives that came with the CNC 4. Yes, I can still move all 3-axis using the CNC4 box with the jog buttons I just don't have the computer that I had on it or the software. Thats why I just going to switch to the Acorn.

Interesting. So the "PC" with boot disc isn't present/working but you can still use the jog buttons? Mine won't do shit. That's not a great feeling for me. I gotta get hooked up and see if my drives are all fubar. The breakout board just arrived.

[Darrell Hall]

Jason got the machine up and going using the Acorn and the CNC 4 drives and power supply. If you have any questions let me know.
Darrell

[swartlkk]

Jason & Darrell, thanks for the discussion so far. I realize that it has been almost a year since the last post in this thread, but I am about to do the same conversion on a Supermax YCM-30 that I just picked up. My motors appear to be the same as Jason's with the same CNC4 controller setup. I do have the circa 1992 computer running MS-DOS that came with the machine and supposedly ran the machine almost 5 years ago. I am going to get that hooked up and see if it all works before I start tearing the guts out of the CNC4.

Now for the questions...

• Would either of you have pictures of what boards remained in the box and how you laid out the components (both new & old)?
• Did you end up using the 24pin breakout board in conjunction with the original ribbon cable to the driver boards?
• What did you do with the encoder inputs from the motor encoders that the CNC4 had plugged into the CPU board?
• Did the transformer & capacitor in the original CNC4 configuration stay in place?

Thanks again for the details you have provided so far! I will continue to look around for more information.